


Questioning Traditions

by JohnBurtonLee



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28305723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnBurtonLee/pseuds/JohnBurtonLee
Summary: Families often have their own specific Christmas traditions. Harry and Hermione's daughter makes the mistake of asking about the origins of one of her family's.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood (background)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 54





	Questioning Traditions

Dahlia Potter-Longbottom was proud to be rather intelligent and also usually quite happy to have married an equally intelligent man, but she was sure that lineage made her daughter's why phase worse than normal. Though sometimes Jasmine used questions to put off bedtime, today Jasmine genuinely seemed to want to know. Unfortunately, Dahlia didn't know the answer to her daughter's big question of the day, so after Jasmine got put to bed she gave her mother a video call. 

When the video came on, her dad was sitting next to her mum on the couch, which was not at all surprising. Nor was the small mountain of books that had appeared on the coffee table sometime between the family call earlier and now. "Hi, sweetie," her mum said with a wave. "I wasn't expecting you to call again today." 

"Jasmine asked me a question I didn't know the answer to." 

"Should I leave while you two talk about magic theory?" her dad asked, which prompted her mother to jab him in the side. (There was a period lasting about half a year starting a few months after she turned fourteen that she worried that her parents were in an abusive relationship. She determined that, no, they just couldn't keep their bloody hands off each other and the pokes and jabs were their way of keeping things appropriate when they had an audience. Unfortunately, the way she determined that involved her parents forgetting that the kids were home from Hogwarts and thus that there was an audience.) 

Dahlia settled back in her armchair, getting the tablet at a better angle, while pulling back her hair (which unfortunately had been inherited from both her parents). "Jasmine wanted to know why we play 'O Children' for Christmas." Obviously Dahlia didn't think Christmas season was complete without hearing it at least once because her parents made a point of playing it every year, but it wasn't especially Christmassy. 

"Are you sure you want to know?" asked her father. 

She remembered clearly the first time her father had told her that the truth could be a terrible thing. Sadly, Dahlia was too much her mother's daughter to ever turn down knowledge. You'd think she'd learn, but, nope, not even finding out that Christmas carolers used to be roving bands of looters and rapists had stopped her thirst for knowledge. So, despite knowing that he warned her for a reason, she gave him a nod. 

"It's the first song you ever heard," her father explained. He shrugged. "It's what was on the radio." 

"He's being excessively tactful. By 'first song you ever heard' he means you were conceived while it was playing. Well, to be more accurate, that was the song that led to you being conceived." 

"What." 

"We play it more as a reminder of our first time together rather than the fact that you were conceived then," her father clarified, though it really, really didn't help much. 

"You play this during Christmas?" Dahlia sputtered. 

Her mother crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "Dahlia, think about when you were born and work backwards." 

"The fifteenth of September minus nine and a half months… would be right around Christmas." 

"The twenty-third of December," her dad said in a helpful tone that wasn't helpful at all. "It's easy to remember because the next day we were attacked by a giant snake and my wand broke." 

The worst part about having Harry Potter as a father were all the casual references to horrifying things that happened in the past that made it really hard to complain about your own life. She couldn't even complain about the pressures of having famous parents. Between Teddy and her dad, complaining about your living, breathing parents seemed rather poor taste. In this case, it felt very petty to complain about her parents telling her about her conception when they had been on the run, hunted by the government all while they were younger than she was now. 

"I did ask you if you really wanted to know." 

Dahlia hung her head. "I know." She rubbed her eyes. "Now how do I explain this to Jasmine?" 

"You could try honesty," her mother said. 

"Mum, there's a reason that Teddy begged the hat 'not Ravenclaw' when he was sorted. I'm trying to raise my daughter without traumatizing her." 

Dahlia's mother huffed. "Knowledge isn't for the timid." And people wondered why her mother made it to Gryffindor and not Ravenclaw. She had a very take no prisoners approach to education (and life in general). 

Her dad shrugged. "Dahlia, honey, Jasmine takes too much after Luna to be traumatized by this." 

Dahlia shuddered. She was a Gryffindor. Her parents were Harry and Hermione Potter. She survived seven years of Potions with her future husband (Frank liked to _experiment_ ). The point was she was brave. So when she said that the only thing she had ever fled in terror from in her life was her mother-in-law's idea of girl talk, it meant that her mother-in-law was really that disturbing and it wasn't that Dahlia was squeamish. So, yes, any reminders that her daughter took after Luna Longbottom nee Lovegood were unwelcome. "I'm also trying to raise her without traumatizing myself." 

Her parents laughed. Well, her mum's laugh was closer to a giggle, but her dad laughed so hard it seemed to actually hurt. Wiping a tear from his eye, he eventually said "That's not going to happen." 

"Thanks, dad. That makes me feel so much better about parenthood." 

"Do I have to remind you about your first experiments with cooking?" 

Dahlia winced. 

Her mother arched a brow. "Or that time we walked in on you and Frank?" 

Dahlia shuddered. It could have gone worse. Her parents had just made sure they were using protection and Dahlia was told that she was doing her own laundry from now on, because they certainly weren't going to deal with her sheets anymore. Still… "I had been doing my best to repress that memory." 

"So say we all," intoned her dad. 

Normally that would be an invitation for Dahlia to make fun of his geek reference. This time? "So say we all." 

Her mum rolled her eyes at their antics. "You actually gave your father nightmares with that." 

"But you like Frank?" 

Her dad shrugged sheepishly. "Dahlia, you look a lot like your mum and Frank looks a lot like Neville when he was that age." 

Dahlia's brain skipped a track. The idea that her dad could be insecure about her mum's love just did not compute. 

It obviously showed on her face, because her dad explained, "It's a nightmare. They don't have to make sense. I've also had nightmares about Voldemort coming back from the dead-" 

Her mum bumped him with her shoulder. "Yes, but that actually happened. A few times depending on how you count things." 

"And Neville was one of the first people you mentioned when the subject of threesomes came up-" 

Dahlia hung up on the video call then and there. Right, she'd repress the last few minutes and would tell Jasmine the excessively tactful version of events. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was telling a friend that I was worried that my niece might grow up thinking that "The Twelve Days of StarCraft" was a traditional Christmas carol. Then he told me about his grand uncle who insisted on playing "Santa Baby" every year for Christmas. Only recently it got out that his grand uncle was sentimental about the song because it was played at the first strip show he had ever gone to.
> 
> Merry Christmas!


End file.
